Dark History of the American Presidents

DARK HISTORY OF THE

AMERICAN PRESIDENTS

MICHAEL KERRIGAN

This digital edition first published in 2012

Published by

Amber Books Ltd

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United Kingdom

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Copyright © 2012 Amber Books Ltd

ISBN: 978 1 908696 28 1

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CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

INTRODUCTION: AN OFFICE IS BORN

CHAPTER I

FOUNDING FATHERS: SLAVEHOLDERS AND ADULTERERS

CHAPTER II

CORRUPT CONSOLIDATION

CHAPTER III

A NATION DIVIDED

CHAPTER IV

CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION

CHAPTER V

THE LOST PRESIDENTS: FRAUD AND FOLLY

CHAPTER VI

WORLD POWER: IN BED WITH INDUSTRY

CHAPTER VII

DEPRESSION AND WAR: THE GREAT DECEIVERS

CHAPTER VIII

COLD WAR: COVERT OPERATORS

CHAPTER IX

THE WORLD STAGE: MEDIA, MISSILES AND MISBEHAVIOUR

INDEX

PROLOGUE

New York City sweltered in the heat of summer on 1 July 1893. Those at work in factories, shops and offices sweated and complained. The rich and powerful had bolted for their coastal playgrounds some time since. Important affairs of state had kept President Grover Cleveland on duty till the end of June, but now at last he was heading north to Massachusetts. He was doing so in some style, however: his good friend Commodore Elias C. Benedict had lent him his yacht, the Oneida , for the voyage to Buzzard’s Bay.

Dazzling sunshine lit up the lapping waters of Long Island Sound; a brisk breeze brought welcome freshness; it was the perfect weather for a coastal cruise. Chuffing steadily eastward, the 75-ton steam yacht was taking full advantage of the calm conditions. There would be choppier waters to come, when the Oneida emerged into the open Atlantic and swung round to the north. In the shelter of the Sound, though, the sea was like a lake.

The whiter-than-white house. With its gracious poise and its Palladian symmetries, 1600 Pennslvania Avenue proclaims the purity of American ideals – but there have been darker goings-on behind these dazzling walls.

An idyllic picture of affluent America at play? That was the idea, and there’s no doubt it was convincing. In busy times of turmoil, Cleveland was taking a well-earned rest. The press reports of the President’s vacation gave an impression of calm and confidence: Cleveland and his administration had everything under control.

A more curious reporter might have wondered why the President was taking his Secretary of War, Daniel S. Lamont, on this pleasure trip, but then care was taken that this detail did not get out. He would have been still more intrigued to learn that those on board the Oneida included an array of eminent surgeons, doctors and dentists, but the President’s guest list was kept strictly under wraps. What sort of ‘vacation cruise’ begins with large and unwieldy gas tanks and strange technological paraphernalia being taken on board ship? Fortunately, it was all smuggled on in the utmost secrecy, so no one asked. Benedict’s yacht had even been entirely repainted in a different colour in readiness for the ‘cruise’, to throw even greater confusion over what was going on.

For the President and his staff, the operation had been a complete success – though as far as they were concerned it had been a PR rather than a medical operation.

Like every other US President, Grover Cleveland was both man and institution: the latter has to hide the former’s frailties, whether physical or moral. The discrepancy between them is the subject of this book.

Scarcely had the Oneida weighed anchor, though, than the medical team got busy. Cleveland was strapped into a chair, secured to the vessel’s mainmast for stability. A skilled dentist having administered nitrous oxide and ether, Cleveland was away in moments, and surgeon Joseph Bryant was prising open the President’s mouth to reach his jaw. The suspected tumour which had caused Cleveland’s physicians so much concern turned out on probing to be far larger than anticipated, but Bryant was bold and decisive: he ended up removing much of his patient’s hard palate and upper jaw. In a follow-up operation, an orthodontist fitted rubber replacements which worked so well that the President’s speech was if anything clearer than before.

Reporters did wonder why the President was so reluctant to talk immediately on his disembarkation at Buzzard’s Bay. But they bought the official insistence that he’d had a toothache treated. For the President and his staff, the operation had been a complete success – though as far as they were concerned it had been a PR rather than a medical operation. The US President is two things – a man (no doubt in time a woman) and an emblem, an institution. The first has frailties, physical and moral, the other not. Covering up the discrepancy between the two has been a large part of the business of the Presidency since the office was created two and a quarter centuries ago.

England’s ‘Merry Monarch’, Charles II, meets the notorious Nell Gwynn, his orange-seller mistress. America’s Puritan founders despised the open decadence of the Old World societies they had left behind.

INTRODUCTION: AN OFFICE IS BORN

No office on earth brings with it greater influence than the US Presidency does, but with unimaginable power comes unthinkable responsibility. Understandably enough, many holders have felt themselves to be all but crushed beneath the weight of their country’s idealistic expectations.

‘Americans … still believe in an America where anything’s possible.’

America was an ideal before it was ever an actual nation: the Founding Fathers had a vision and made it real. They looked across the Atlantic to an Old World in which power was chronically corrupt, from the courts of kings to the palaces of the Papacy. It should have been so different, of course. Philosophers like France’s René Descartes and scientists like Sir Isaac Newton in England had ushered in an Age of Enlightenment. Their insights had helped clear the way to a new understanding of the universe. There was no need for people to be kept down in ignorance or chained in poverty any longer: humankind had a very special destiny.

Knowledge, the Enlightenment thinkers saw, could set men and women free. Reason could come to the rescue of the oppressed. Far from being blind to these new developments, Europe’s tyrannical rulers saw and understood them all too well. They had no interest in giving up their privileges and power. Neither did a Catholic Church whose leaders were hand-in-glove with Europe’s kings. They did their best to suppress the new learning and the spirit of liberty that went with it. And overall, it has to be admitted that they didn’t do badly: the mass of people were lost in suppression and sunk in superstition.

Fathers and Faith

Men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton were thinkers first and Founding Fathers only second. Their ambition in establishing the United States wasn’t to set themselves up at the head of a new nation but to break what was becoming an intolerable British hold on their country and to realize the reign of Enlightenment on earth. For the most part they distrusted religion – or at least any role it might assume in the running of the state. Looking to Europe, they saw a collaborationist Catholic Church whose cardinals cavorted with mistresses, while their priests bamboozled the peasantry with Latin, justifying their poverty and oppression. So even the believers among them were eager to sign up to the famous secularism of America’s Constitution: no one, however virtuous, would dictate to others what they should believe.

Yet it wasn’t quite so simple. The New Republic may have been an avowedly secular state, but at the popular level it had (then as now) a religious streak a mile wide. Many of the first settlers had, of course, been Puritans, devout Protestants fleeing persecution by the authorities of the Anglican Church in England and by established churches elsewhere in Europe. For them, the New World represented a safe sanctuary for their Protestant observances and they quite naturally saw their lives here not just as an emigration but as a spiritual rebirth. And, though many of America’s leading intellectuals did regard themselves as free-thinkers, who’d left their inherited Christian beliefs behind, they were more concerned with upholding religious freedom than with stamping out religion. They were secularists because they didn’t want one dominant church or movement trampling another’s rights rather than because they wanted to abolish religion altogether.

Even allowing for the exaggerations of the Protestant propagandists, the Papacy was undoubtedly corrupt. The excesses of Pope Alexander VI made a mockery of his supposed status as successor to St Peter.

All Eyes on America

Not that there was any great likelihood of this ever happening. America feared God more than it feared its Founding Fathers. ‘No Taxation Without Representation’ may have been the colonists’ call to arms when the crunch with England came, but religious resentments had been bubbling under for generations. If America felt it was a place apart, it wasn’t because the Atlantic Ocean separated them so emphatically from the Old World in geographical terms but because its people felt they were striking out in a new direction morally and spiritually. They were engaged, they strongly believed, in building a new society that wasn’t going to be sinful like the old. That’s not to say that there weren’t no-goods and ne’er-do-wells among the colonists, of course: man for man (and woman for woman) they probably weren’t any better than anyone else. The feeling was strong that they should be, though, and whatever weaknesses this or that individual might have, they shared a strongly rooted moral purpose. America wasn’t going to be a nation like all the rest, its people told themselves: it had a special responsibility to show the way.

John Winthrop’s vision of the ‘City on a Hill’ has inspired generations of Americans in the centuries since, including many millions who never knew the preacher’s name or shared his religious creed.

Their ambition in establishing the United States wasn’t to set themselves up at the head of a new nation but to break what was becoming an intolerable British hold on their country.

It had been the Protestant preacher John Winthrop who’d first voiced the idea of the ‘City on a Hill’. The phrase came originally from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 13–16), of course. Jesus warned his followers that the whole world would be watching the way they lived. The City on a Hill stands out in pride, he pointed out – but potentially also in disgrace; its actions can’t be hidden from the world at large. It’s an example to everyone, its deeds – and misdeeds – promptly judged. In all probability, the Founding Fathers never even knew Winthrop had existed: his works weren’t widely circulated till well on in the nineteenth century. What’s striking to us today is not so much that they signed up to Winthrop’s Christian beliefs – because they clearly didn’t – as that they shared his intense self-consciousness, his feeling that he and his little community were on display. The Founding Fathers too felt that their great project was exposing America to the unsparing judgement of outsiders; that they had to be seen to be better than those from whom they were breaking free.

Moral perfection is hard for humans to achieve. Yet the United States has always felt at some level that this is what’s required; that its leaders should stand out as exemplars.

That sense has never left America in the centuries since, and though Winthrop’s phrase has become a cliché, it’s never quite lost its power to stir the spirit. Yet if it’s been a source of enormous patriotic pride, it’s also been a constant cause of anxiety and shame, because moral perfection is hard for humans to achieve. Yet the United States has always felt at some level that this is what’s required; that its leaders should stand out as exemplars.

A Question of Standards

It’s important to remember just how unusual this is. In most times and places, people have viewed their leaders more sceptically – and more tolerantly. The view that every French politician of any importance will have at least one mistress may be a stereotype, but history tells us that it’s frequently been true. And there have been many countries in which financial corruption has been endemic; within reason, indeed, it’s been accepted as OK.

The Pilgrim Fathers came with an explicitly religious, ambitious and clear intent to build a brand new and moral society, in direct contrast with the corrupt one that they had left behind in Europe.

The Roman Empire didn’t for the most part hold itself up as a beacon of morality – except in so far as might was right. And whilst the decadence of the Imperial court was nothing less than legendary, the legions upheld the military virtues to the very end. The same went for the kings of medieval and early-modern Europe: bad behaviour was more or less expected; what mattered was the authority of their rule. No one really minded that Britain’s Charles II had so many mistresses: the antics of the ‘Merry Monarch’ merely drew a smile. As for the Rome of the Popes – well, for sure, the successor of St Peter was supposed to set high standards, but this was a ‘fallen’ world, with everything that implied. Ever since Eve and Adam ate the fatal fruit, mortal men and women had been but sinners. They should strive, but we had to forgive them when they failed.

Thanks to its infamous orgies, imperial Rome has become a byword for decadence and degeneracy: writers like Juvenal and Seneca were scathing about their rulers’ conspicuous consumption and moral laxness.

Does it make America ‘better’ that it expects much more of its politicians? That’s actually very difficult to say. Do we judge by our moral aspirations (the standards that we set) or rather by the reality (the fact that so many fail to meet them)? Yet, easy as it is to sneer at the hypocrisy that so regularly seems so deeply embedded in the American Way, would it really be better to accept an ethical free-for-all?

It’s got to be a good thing – surely – that we expect our representatives not to sell their influence to the highest bidder or enrich themselves at our expense. Even if then they go ahead and do it anyway …

A PROBLEMATIC PROPHET

JOHN WINTHROP MAY HAVE ARTICULATED the spirit of the American Republic better than anyone else, but – his historic soundbite apart – he has his limitations as a role model. For one thing, his deeply felt egalitarianism puts him at odds with the ‘American Dream’. Those of his flock who flourished, he always argued, had a responsibility to see to the well-being of their fellows before they thought about building better homes or living more affluently. The community had to come before the individual, in other words: to many Americans today, this would smack of socialism. But he believed every bit as passionately that differences of rank should be preserved: the aristocracy were born to lead, he argued. He claimed divine backing for his view: kings reigned by right in the Old Testament, he pointed out, and – since Kings and Queens were symbolic parents – any sort of popular power was in clear breach of the Commandment ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’. Just in case this left any ambiguity, Winthrop went on to spell his objections out: ‘Democracy is … the meanest and worst of all forms of government.’

All the President’s Powers

The powers of the Presidency are immense: and always were, even at the outset when the United States were just a bunch of upstart colonies. Though he himself was democratically elected, the President was accorded enormous authority by the Constitution of 1787, which gave him an effective right of veto over measures passed by the legislature. In principle (and frequently in practice) that means one elected official squashing laws agreed by other elected officials, but then democratic government has always been about the art of compromise. The President gets to appoint key members of the judiciary and, though in theory always accountable, has sweeping powers to overrule state legislatures. He can also withhold information from Congress when (in his view) there are grounds of national security. Whilst in theory the right to declare war is reserved to the elected legislature, the United States has actually declared war only five times in its entire history (that’s right, five). Effectively, the President has the right to send US troops wherever he feels they’re needed: Presidents have acted without congressional say-so over 120 times. There’s no doubt that, with the powers invested in him, the US President is in a position to a great deal of good – and conversely, of course, a great deal of harm.

Even in American political discourse we talk in principle of the separation between the ‘man’ and the ‘office’, but it’s harder to maintain this separation in fact.

The moral responsibilities of a US President are commensurately awesome: in some ways that might be seen as an unfair burden. Even in American political discourse we talk in principle of the separation between the ‘man’ and the ‘office’, but it’s harder to maintain this separation in fact. A corrupt cardinal wore his scarlet robes when serving in his official capacity as prelate; he took them off (one assumes) when tumbling with his mistress. A European king’s authority was unquestioned, but it was vested clearly in his crown and sceptre: when he put those aside, he was just another man – albeit a very rich and privileged one. But when we look at Barack Obama – just as when we looked at George Washington – the man and the statesman are very recognizably the same guy.

And so it’s always been. It’s perhaps an impossible tightrope that the President has to walk: to be extraordinary and ordinary at the same time. The photos in this book underline it: US Presidents don’t wear ceremonial robes (unless they’re being awarded honorary degrees by universities or colleges). They stand before us as men – important men, certainly – in frock coats and business suits, like so many millions of middle-class Americans of their age. Often they pose with their ‘First Ladies’, looking like the other hostesses of their time, elegantly turned-out, to be sure, but clearly ‘of this world’. Britain’s recent elections have brought talk of an ‘Americanized’ style of politics in which party leaders have been put forward in a ‘Presidential’ manner: one key ingredient has been a frenzied media ‘war of the wives’. US Presidential TV debates often dwell disproportionately (to European eyes) on a competitive assertion of family-feeling on the candidates’ part.

DON’T SWEAT THE SEX?

SHOULD WE WORRY ABOUT sex scandals at all? We elect our representatives to govern the country, not their carnal wants. Their obligation to us is to discharge their public duties conscientiously and effectively: their duties to their spouses and families aren’t our concern. In some European countries, that’s the generally held assumption – and some would say that Americans should take a more ‘sophisticated’ line. Who are we to judge? Most of us don’t face their temptations – and when we do, of course, a great many of us succumb.

Yet there are arguments the other way: many people take exception to offences of this sort for religious reasons, but there are more pragmatic grounds for feeling unease as well. Can we really compartmentalize the private and the public so completely? When, in order to get what we want, we’re capable of lying deliberately and systematically to our family, are we fit to look after the public finances and the legal system? What if we find there’s something else we want and that we can get only by lying? The record’s shown that they may well be